What Made Silent Hill 2 Remake Our Game of the Year 2024

Beating heavy-hitting titles like Astro Bot, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is Silent Hill 2, GamingBolt’s game of the year for 2024. We haven’t bestowed Bloober Team with our most significant annual accolade to be contrarian though. No, Bloober Team absolutely smashed it out of the park with their careful reimagining. They preserved everything that made the original great: it’s pervasively noxious atmosphere, enrapturing music and sound design, and its complex characterisation whilst adding their own stamp which, given their middling track record, usurped many an expectation that they’d fluff their lines to deliver a lacklustre remake not befitting of the original’s legacy. Well, rejoice horror fans: Silent Hill 2’s remake is a triumph.

Much noise preceded the remake’s release, centred mostly on Bloober Team’s track record. For every half-decent horror in their repertoire such as The Medium or Observer there’re bang average titles such as Layers of Fear 2 and Blair Witch. It’s fair to say Bloober hadn’t yet proven themselves when the announcement came that they’d been given the keys to James Sunderland’s psyche, so the wide-spread trepidation surrounding the title was understandable. However, this is a studio comprised of passionate individuals, a team hellbent on doing justice to such iconic source material.

We’ve already stated in prior features of the monumental task Bloober Team faced. Principally, remaking any video game is like reinterpreting memories, but with Silent Hill 2 being a game steeped in interpretation, with its fog-addled alleyways coaxing our individual anxieties into combined dread, these two-decade old memories were perhaps more nebulous than any game that’s been remade before. Questions were raised: would applying a hi-res sheen dilute Silent Hill 2’s dreamlike quality? Will the over-the-shoulder perspective so prevalent in modern video games hinder the game’s inherent claustrophobia? Will combat be over-modified to the point its transformed into something too action-orientated? Bloober needed to apply the deftest of touches, to consider every key characteristic meticulously so as not to ruin the original game’s immersive quality.

Let’s take those re-vamped graphics. Sure, aside from some blurry edges here and there, the game looks great. However, Bloober Team recognised that enhanced graphics won’t contribute to selling fear on their own. Instead, higher fidelity graphics have been deployed to illustrate James’ decent into madness. The opaque fog, so integral to the game’s iconography, insulates James from the horrors lurking within the abandoned town more effectively than ever. Interiors are dank, jarringly so, and the deeper James explores the more unkempt these inside spaces become. Texture-wise, surfaces begin to show rust and decay; architecture becomes hostile. James is on a downward spiral, and the dimly lit corridors he treads through morph into illustrations of his psyche the further his mental state falls. Lighting, particularly darkness and shade, exemplify this interior hostility too, none more so than in the Toluca Prison section whereby huge portions of the time spent inside are in near-complete darkness. Sanctuary from the oppressive blackness is found in activating breaker switches, but these only lift the gloom momentarily making every trek between their locations a nerve-wrecking voyage, the fear of utter dark descending once again tarnishing any respite James may harbour in the light’s moderately comforting glow.

These graphical elements serve to support Silent Hill 2 Remake’s newfound over-the-shoulder perspective. Yes, a broader field of view for the player risked losing the original’s claustrophobic immersion, but in absorbing hostile detail and in traipsing through pitch black the over-the-shoulder perspective shines. Fixed camera positions of old wouldn’t sell the dread of being entombed within the confines of a shrivelled-up apartment complex half as well.

The interior levels are labyrinthine in design too, obfuscated mazes ensnaring James, demanding he shuffle back and forth in desperate search of a solution to break free. Some of these levels perhaps overstay their welcome, but arguably this was Bloober Team’s intention. See, the oppressiveness James – and thus us as players – are experiencing in these twisted corridors is heightened by the feeling of being trapped. They’re perpetuating mental fatigue for both us and James. Toss in the aforesaid surface texture and haphazard lighting, and the sheer relief at breaking back outside into the greyscale mist of the town’s streets feels like breathing again after damn-near suffocating to death.

Underscoring the suffocating oppressiveness further is Silent Hill 2 Remake’s music and sound design, and this is another element Bloober Team have made significant improvements via carefully considering which aspects to preserve and which to embellish. Soundscape-wise, Silent Hill 2 is famous for its long stretches of silence, especially in moments of monster-confronting terror, and sound was used by Bloober to usurp expectations in Remake in similar fashion. In Bloober Team’s ‘How Silence Turns Fog Into Fear’ dev diary video we’re invited by Lead Technical Sound Designer Filip Zeglen to take ten minutes to tune our ears into the eerie world around us. What is discoverable is that what initially sounds like silence is a dense menage of field recordings and foley sounds interwoven into audible tapestry; industrial scrapes, indistinct scratching, electrical buzzing and hum, distant moans, squelching footsteps, an unexpected jangling of keys. Audibly speaking, the environment is shifting and unmoving simultaneously.

Akira Yamaoka’s incredible original soundtrack – a fusion of atonal drones, trip-hop beats, and radio friendly Americana – has been reinterpreted sublimely too. Akira-san, much like the rest of Remake’s creation, tugged on memories of the original. He recalls familiar motifs but buries some in layers of hiss and reverb whilst re-recording others with orchestral aplomb. Bloober’s audio team resampled and remixed Yamaoka’s new soundtrack, weaving it into soundscapes specifically tuned for surround sound and 3D audio, presenting newfound immersion from the guts of what was already there.

Furthermore, character presentation was supremely well done. Harnessing cutting-edge motion capture tech, the characters in Silent Hill 2 display their emotions more readily in the expression on their faces. Through a refined script, you’re now expected to read and interpret for yourself what the characters are feeling through the lines on their faces. It’s a shrewd move which creates an emotional connection with them beyond their prior function as mirrors to James’ cracked psyche. And speaking of James, props must go to English voice performer Luke Roberts who portrayed James’ tenderness and vulnerability expertly. Seasoned players are already aware of Sunderland’s maddening arc and the gut-punching reality nurturing his guilt, but when the reveal comes it still harbours shock value thanks to Roberts. James’ docile personality as portrayed by Roberts supports Remake’s sluggish combat as well. See, James is an ordinary man thrust into a world he doesn’t understand, stumbling upon weapons he has no experience with. His ineptitude with guns, his stumbling dodge, and his weakness when wielding melee weapons fosters yet more dread and anxiety in us.

There’ll be an unwavering legacy underpinning Silent Hill 2 Remake for years to come. In staying faithful to the original whilst exaggerating all that made it such an endearing, inspirational success, Bloober Team have created a remake perfect for long-time players as much as newcomers. As good as 2024’s marquee games are, none come close to Silent Hill 2 Remake.